Antithesis Poem by Chika Nwokeoma

As I open the book to search for
the meaning of my ancestral blackness
what I found was different from
what ma papa told me...
it evokes the negative

''black opposite of white
from the obscene
it went further as in
obscurity
gloomy, murkiness

angry, yet with pride I fliped over the page
the words glared back in black darkly meaning
heaping more insult on my ancestral blackness:
deadly
sinister
wicked
dismal
angry and lowering...
was ma papa wrong?

the compound words that follows
were more regressing;
black market
black death
black book
black sheep...
black this negative
black that negative

***
oh! least I forget;
the color of the book is white